


Whatever It Takes

by lar_laughs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Movie, love is for children explanation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha waits beside his bed, struggling to figure out what words to put together to explain what she feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever It Takes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [icecream_junkie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=icecream_junkie).



> Many thanks to Sneaky for the beta help!
> 
> Written for the [be_compromised Mini Valentine's Day Promptathon](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/258344.htm). For inspiration, I used the prompt from icecream_junkie:
> 
> Proof - by Emily Dickinson
> 
> _That I did always love,_  
>  I bring thee proof:  
> That till I loved  
> I did not love enough.
> 
>  
> 
> _That I shall love alway,_  
>  I offer thee  
> That love is life,  
> And life hath immortality.
> 
>  
> 
> _This, dost thou doubt, sweet?_  
>  Then have I  
> Nothing to show  
> But Cavalry.

Washing the shampoo out of her hair didn’t take as long as she thought it would. Natasha watched the last bit of suds swirl down the drain before she turned off the water. Even then she didn’t turn to leave the stall. Instead, she leaned her forehead against the cool tile.

One deep breath. Another deep breath. For the first time in her life, Natasha felt the desire to cry. After letting a few telltale tears fall, she stood straight and tall. It was useless to hide away from what was waiting for her on the other side of the door. There was nothing she could do but face her deepest fear come to life.

“Just try it,” she whispered, her hands clenched into fists. “Just try to take him from me.”

***

Everything hurt. Clint blinked his eyes open, aware almost instantly that something wasn’t right. Something? Hell, nothing was right.

“Tasha? Tash? You there?” Nothing but the ticking of a clock and the most intense blackness he’d ever seen. He had full movement of his hands and legs but they didn’t want to move without a lot of effort. Moving his right hand from beside him to his chest felt like a feat of strength he didn’t know if he could do again. He thought about trying it with his left hand but the thought scared him. If he couldn’t use that hand, what good was he?

Before he could try to work through the ever-present fear, he fell into unconscious again.

***

_”You don’t mean it.”_

_He’d looked at her like she was the crazy one. “Who says I don’t. You’re pushing your fears off onto me, Tasha. Try seeing it from my point of view.”_

_She’d tried. For years, she’d rejected his claims that he loved her. “It’s enough that I know,” he’d told her over and over, as if that made her rejection okay. Love. The very idea of it made her skin crawl as if there were a thousand squirming insects feasting on her flesh because that’s what love did. It used you when you were at your lowest, aiming right where it knew the weaknesses were. It beat you into submission. It wasn’t real, no matter how much he tried to tell her it was._

_And then he’d changed his mind. “I don’t love you,” he told her one day, a smile on his face so broad and sweet that she couldn’t look at him without her heart beating too fast in her chest. She’d felt smug, though. Smug in the realization that she’d worn him down at last. No one could really love someone with so much red in her ledger, with so much blood on her hands, with so many souls clamoring at her soul._

_When she’d stayed silent, her face set into a mask of someone who didn’t care, he’d captured her hand with one of his. “You were right. Love is a bad word for what it is that I feel. Love is for children.”_

_That had earned him a quick grin before she’d pulled on the facade once again. When he kept talking, she felt the facade slide away as if it had never existed. “What I feel for you is far deeper than love. Far stronger. I adore you, true, but that also puts limits on it. What I feel for you has no words. There is nothing in human language that is explains our bond. I would rip out the sky for you, Natasha. I would race into hell to find you and taunt the gods to get you out. No matter where you go, I will find you. I will spend my life helping you find redemption until you think you’re worthy again. Whatever it takes.”_

Now, sitting beside the reclined bed in the dim room, Natasha replayed Clint’s words. She held his left hand gingerly in her own, stroking a finger over the bony knuckles and fine hairs. This was not the first time she’d sat beside a bed in a darkened room, holding his hand. This was the worst, though. He’d woken up once, they told her. Once in thirty hours. Because she’d run through her luck, she hadn’t been in the room but had gone looking for much needed caffeine. Now the nurses were bringing her the thin cups of the bitter brew. The sleep her body demanded of her came in fifteen minute intervals but it was never deep enough that she wouldn’t be able to hear him if he decided to beat the odds the doctors had given him.

She read to him by the hour, both in Russian and English. Sometimes in French, when she could concentrate enough to see the words on the page. Most everything was by rote, written on her brain from times like these too numerous to contemplate. The books she read were favorites of theirs. Some they’d brought to the relationship, eager to share their favorite things with the other. Some they’d found together, reading paragraphs or pages that caught their fancy as the other listened intently for the thing that made it special.

Doing this again, in this setting, made her realize all the more fully that he would die someday. He would get old and wither away or be taken from her in the heart of battle. However it happened, he would die and she would be left alone. 

Again.

“I don’t love you,” she whispered, her voice harsh to her own ears over the quiet sounds of the machinery keeping Clint as close to the land of the living as they dared, “but I need you more than breath. More than the blood in my veins. More than any desire for redemption.”

The words sounded absurd coming from her mouth. She wasn’t meant to spout poetry like a fool dancing around for a king. Her thoughts weren’t flowery so she never found the right balance in her words that other people seemed to achieve when they were talking about their feelings. She could speak truth, though. That was something she was good at.

“I went to hell and brought you back, Clint. I did that for you. No, I did that for me. I can’t live without you.”

That was all there was inside her to say. The rest couldn’t be formed into coherent thoughts or, if it could, it hurt too much to form them into something so small as a word. What she felt for him at this moment - at every moment - was not something for conversation. It was meant for action and all she could do right now was sit at his bedside and wait.

***

His joints were stiff with cold. That was a relief because it meant he could feel them all. Better to be in pain everywhere than numb. He’d been numb the last few times he’d risen to consciousness. So numb that it had started to scare him.

But he didn’t have time for that now. He cracked open his eyelids, surprised how hard such a small action was. “Tasha?”

“I’m here, Clint.”

He verified that it was her face hovering above his before shutting his eyes again. Since it was going to take some time to muster enough strength for a conversation of any length, he squeezed her hand instead. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” There were a healthy dose of tears that could be heard in her sarcastic tone. “Do you want some ice chips?”

“Cold,” he informed her as his body caught up with his mind and his muscles began to clinch as the unforgiving shivering began again. It was better than hellfire any day but it sapped all his energy.

The bed shifted as she climbed up beside him, adjusting his body as she did her own so that they were tangled together. One of her fingers stroked up and down his neck, drawing pain up to the surface of his skin with each touch but he wasn’t about to stop her. He needed this too much.

“Love you, Tasha.” It was the wrong word to say but he couldn’t think of anything else to tell her how much she meant to him as he slipped back under the dark covers of sleep once again.

***

They kept using words like rehabilitation and therapy but Natasha had long ago stopped listening to the doctors. As they tried to tamper her hope with reality, she concentrated on each of rise and fall of Clint’s chest. He would live. That was all that mattered.

“When he wakes up, he can decide for himself.” It didn’t matter how many times she said it, they kept coming back with the assumption that she spoke for him. He wasn’t without voice so their assumptions angered her. Each day, he was awake for longer periods of time. The fevers had abated and he was sleeping instead of falling unconscious. His body was recovering. In time, he would decide what sort of convalescence he wanted to endure and what level he wanted to be at. All she cared about was that his chest rose and fell on its own, unaided by machines and tubes.

His blue eyes focused on her almost immediately when he woke up, his lips notching up on one side. “Love you,” he said, his voice stronger than it had been last time.

Instead of correcting him, she leaned forward to kiss his cheek. She still didn’t have her own words for him but she had actions. And she had hope.


End file.
